Christopher Booker

Christopher Booker has been a writer and editor for magazines such as Private Eye and has a long-running column in the UK's Sunday Telegraph.

Climate Change Skeptic
Booker wrote an article, titled "“The world has never seen such freezing heat,” published in the UK’s Telegraph, which purports to be a "shocking exposé of a blunder big enough potentially to bring climate change science to its knees." Yet, according to EcoWorldly, the article falls considerably short of its goal, especially in terms of its scientific integrity. Booker was also a speaker at the International Conference on Climate Change (2009), a gathering of climate change skeptics organized by the conservative think tank, the Heartland Institute. His presentation was entitled, "Remember the Poor: A Christian Perspective on Energy Rationing."

Booker is frequently derided for his inaccurate and sometimes dishonest reporting. George Monbiot draws attention to Booker's attack on Michael Mann of Hockey Stick fame. Mann’s paper was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Booker attempted to refute it by using the claims of unqualified bloggers to refute peer-reviewed studies. In December 2009 Booker (along with Richard North (blogger) made allegations of financial impropriety against IPCC Chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri. These were published in the Sunday Telegraph which subsequently withdrew them after a libel action . In August 2010, the Telegraph apologized to Pachauri after accounting firm KPMG found his business dealings spotless.

To highlight the level of inaccuracy and falsehood in skeptical journalism the Guardian launched a prize in 2009 to be "presented to whoever crams as many misrepresentations, distortions and falsehoods into a single article, statement, lecture, film or interview about climate change". This was called the "Christopher Booker prize" The first nomination was inevitably Christopher Booker for an article about arctic sea ice with six errors in 900 words.

Booker interferes with freedom of bookseller to categorize his work. When Amazon in the UK re-categorizinged Booker's work, he published a lament of that in his Sunday Telegraph blog. He also has gets his publisher to intervene with the online bookseller and agitates for other skeptic publishers to act. Whilst a minor issue, putting literature into categories is the task and the freedom of the bookseller. This is an instance of Booker trying to control the context of his skepticism.

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Global warming skeptics
 * Heartland Institute
 * SourceWatch:Project:Creating Articles on Sponsors and Speakers at The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change

External resources

 * A Bookful of Bookerisms http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/07/06/a-bookful-of-bookerisms/
 * How much longer can Christopher Booker go on misleading readers? http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/may/13/christopher-booker-misleading